Brain
Bethesda, MD - Researchers have created 3D tissue structures that recapitulate many aspects of specific human brain regions. These tiny, brain-region specific spheroids are allowing scientists to study previously inaccessible aspects of human brain development and function.
100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area of Cretaceous rock formations in south-eastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.
The structure of enzymes determines how they control vital processes such as digestion or immune response. This is because the protein compounds are not rigid, but can change their shape through movable "hinges". The shape of enzymes can depend on whether their structure is measured in the test tube or in the living cell. This is what physicochemists at the University of Bonn discovered about YopO, an enzyme of the plague pathogen. This fundamental result, which has now been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, is potentially also of interest for drug research.
Climate change and warming seas are transforming tropical coral reefs and undoing decades of knowledge about how to protect these delicate and vital ecosystems.
Many of the world's coral reefs are seeing biodiversity plunge in the face of repeated coral bleaching events.
Protected areas, called marine reserves, are an effective and long-established tool in the conservation toolbox. Marine reserves have been used for decades to enhance biodiversity and fish biomass by preventing damage and over-exploitation by fishing.
South Korea with its high antibiotic use is categorized as a country at high risk of the emergence of *multi drug-resistant bacteria, or so-called "super bacteria." According to the Ministry of Environment, antibiotic substances have been detected at livestock wastewater treatment facilities, sewage treatment plants, and in rivers.
*Multi drug-resistant bacteria: Bacteria resistant to different antibiotics. Also called super-bacteria.
DALLAS – April 23, 2020 – A combination of immunotherapy agents that encourages some immune cells to eat cancer cells and alert others to attack tumors put mice with a deadly type of brain cancer called glioblastoma into long-term remission, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists suggests.
Current regulatory standards regarding the dissolved oxygen and pH levels of coastal waters have not kept pace with the scientific understanding of hypoxia and acidification, nor with the mounting evidence of their negative impact on coastal marine life. In light of these shortcomings, a Policy Forum by Stephen Tomasetti and Christopher Gobler argues the need for new approaches to coastal policy that account for new knowledge, and ultimately, that lead to improved protection of important coastal fisheries worldwide.
Many organizations arrange employees into groups, and research has recognized the importance of groups having access to resources (e.g., labor, knowledge, raw materials, technology, financial capital), as well as how they use those resources to ensure optimal performance. These studies have shown that groups with the same resources vary in how they use what is available, suggesting that the same resources can have different effects across groups.
A new study shows that "hotspots" of nutrients surrounding phytoplankton -- which are tiny marine algae producing approximately half of the oxygen we breathe every day -- play an outsized role in the release of a gas involved in cloud formation and climate regulation.
With children currently cooped up at home with limited access to their friends, a new study shows just how important it is to have fun and what that means in a child's social circles. Children who are well-liked and children who are popular enjoy tremendous advantages in the peer group. After decades of research, experts know something about the characteristics of children who enjoy high status in the peer group. Children who are well-liked tend to be outgoing, assertive, prosocial, and academically competent; they are neither aggressive nor withdrawn.
A new way to deliver therapeutic proteins inside the body uses an acoustically sensitive carrier to encapsulate the proteins and ultrasound to image and guide the package to the exact location required, according to Penn State researchers. Ultrasound then breaks the capsule, allowing the protein to enter the cell.
Current marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean need to be at least doubled to adequately safeguard the biodiversity of the Antarctic, according to a new CU Boulder study published today, Earth Day, in the journal PLOS ONE.
Proposals under consideration by an international council this year would significantly improve the variety of habitats protected, sustain fish populations and enhance the region's resilience to the effects of climate change, the authors say.
Over 6,000 languages are currently spoken worldwide, but a substantial minority - well over 5% - are in danger of dying out. It is perhaps surprising that this fraction is no higher, as most models have so far predicted that a minority language will be doomed to extinction once contacts with speakers of the majority language reach a certain level.
The mollusc Leptogyra bujnitzkii appeared in a biological collection in Russia thanks to the legendary Arctic drift that began on 23 October 1937. Three icebreaking steamers - Georgiy Sedov, Malygin and Sadko - were beset and drifting in the ice following the sea current in the area of the New Siberian Islands. The same current transports drift-wood from the Siberian rivers towards Greenland. In August 1938, the veteran icebreaker Yermak freed the Sadko and Malygin. However, the Sedov, whose rudder was badly damaged, had to be left in the ice 'as a drifting high-latitude station'.
DALLAS - April 21, 2020 - Immunotherapy drugs that target a protein called programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) on the surface of cancer cells have quickly become a mainstay to treat many forms of cancer, often with dramatic results. But exactly how cancer cells turn on this protein was not completely understood. New research by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists, published online today in Nature Cancer, lays out key pieces of this mechanism. The findings could offer new targets that may further improve how well current cancer immunotherapies work.